Zanzibar is an incredibly beautiful island on the Indian Ocean off the coast from Tanzania. It has a fascinating history, languid beaches, really nice scuba diving, and a surprisingly nice surf break. Zanzibar is good for both surfing and diving.
Stone Town
With its tight, winding alleyway like streets and its strong Swahili-Arabic culture, Stone Town is the exotic cultural center of the island of Zanzibar. It’s a wonderful place to wander around in for a few days. There is a bit more to Zanzibar than surfing and diving.
The Slave Market
Unfortunately, one of the legacies of Zanzibar is its slave history. It was used as a transition point for African and Arabian slavers on the continent – who took advantage of wars and dislocations as new tribes from the north and south moved into central Africa – to mostly Arabian traders on the island who transported them throughout various countries that bordered the Indian Ocean.
The main slave market in Stone Town was shut down by the British in 1873. They immediately began building an Anglican Church on the site. This is still used for services on Sundays, but the rest of the week is part of a small, but powerful museum on the site.
Behind the church is the Slave Market Memorial created in 1998 by Clara Sornas of Sweden.
Below St Monica’s guesthouse, dozens of slaves, and women and children, were imprisoned for days in crowded cellars with little air and no food or toilets.
A Spice Farm
Producing spices – primarily cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and black pepper – are one of the biggest industries of Zanzibar. I had a chance to tour a “spice farm”. It really wasn’t a working farm, but a place to take tourists to give them a full experience of the types of spices that have been grown here. I had a local guide and we basically went all around the area grabbing leaves and roots and smelling all the different products. It was a nice experience, but I probably wouldn’t do it again.
I stayed in a funky hotel right near the ocean. My room was basic, but the facilities by the ocean were pretty relaxing.
Scuba Diving in Zanzibar
I spent a week scuba diving on the northeast coast in an enchanting small town called Matemwe. The diving wasn’t world class spectacular, but it was still really nice. There were some beautiful coral and I saw some things I hadn’t seen on any other dives, including a sea horse and an octopus.
I stayed in a small ocean front hotel with eight rooms and two villas called Tamani Villas that I found through Airbnb. The cool thing is that they built it to support a local school, so everyone there is really focused on making sure the guests have a great experience.
Surfing in Zanzibar
Paje is a beautiful small village in the southeast of Zanzibar that has grown into a European beach playground known for excellent kitesurfing. As you can see below it also has a long, beautiful beach with a number of places to spend the day lounging around.
As you go into town, there a ton of small craft shops selling all kinds of African art.
They say there’s no surf on Zanzibar. There actually is, but you have to really work for it. The intrepid folks at Aquaholics (the surfing and kitesurfing center in Paje) have figured it out.
The Process
Surfing here involves taking a 15 minute cab from Paje to a second surf center in Dongwe. Then walking a couple hundred meters with your boards, getting on a small boat for a 10 minute ride inside the main reef, and another 5 minute walk to where the waves are. And you can only really do this for about a 2 hour window when low tide is shifting to high tide. But for those 90 or so minutes the surf is really consistent. And then the tide really starts rushing in and all bets are off. The consistent force coming in is pretty amazing. After a short time it becomes apparent that time to drift back on your boards to the waiting boats. The good news is that with the much higher tide level you can take the boats all the way back to the surf shop with minimal walking.
Below you can see the difference between low tide and high tide.
The beautiful 3 minute video on the Aquaholics page shows what it’s like: https://www.aquaholics-zanzibar.com/
There’s a beginner area right near the reef on the inside where you get nice small waist high sets or a more intermediate area more outside where you can get shoulder and head high sets. I started the first day at the beginner area and then went out the second day to the outside area. It was a lot of fun. The waves were fast and fun. Unfortunately, it involved continuous paddling to get set up against the current. By the end of the session my unforgiving right shoulder started to feel it. So I spent the next few sessions inside before going back outside my last two sessions.
Ebb & Flow
I stayed at a small hotel called Ebb & Flow that was owned by the owners of Aquaholics. It was a wonderful place to spend two weeks.
